


be right back.

by xavierdolls



Category: In the Flesh (TV), Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, F/F, Post-Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-01
Updated: 2018-09-15
Packaged: 2019-07-05 08:51:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15860295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xavierdolls/pseuds/xavierdolls
Summary: The dead come back, and Wynonna is one of them. The ridiculous zombie AU that is way more heartbreaking than it has any right to be.





	1. Chapter 1

It’s out here somewhere, maybe just behind the trees. Nicole can still hear it, so she can’t drop her gun, no matter how bad the burn in her shoulder gets. In the darkness she can’t tell if she’s walking through grains or just long grass, but it comes up to her knees, whatever it is. If she tries to run, all she can see is herself tripping, falling. Her arms are out straight, she’s locked in weaver stance and she doesn’t dare to move. The flash light at the end of her gun is doing more harm than good: she can’t see it yet, but it’s sure making her more visible.

Good thing they all don’t have eyesight for shit. But hearing is another thing.

“You got eyes on it, Haught?” The radio of her shoulder crackles and Nicole rushes to cover it with her hand, breaking her own formation. She covers the speaker like that'll do anything to muffle the noise. Nicole fiddles around with it, arm awkward crossed around her body and under her neck. She's trying to find the off switch, to cut off the sound before it gets any worse. She takes a step backward and the grass - or wheat, or rye, whatever it is - rustles around her.

Nicole keeps her mouth shut, not even allowing herself the simple pleasure of cursing at the situation she's found herself in. All she wants is to stay quiet, but even her silence doesn't go unnoticed for long.

"Office Haught?" the static, awful voice crackles over the radio again. Nicole is sure it's even louder this time, somehow. She knows where the off switch is supposed to be, but the adrenaline is making her fingers feel bigger than they are and she can't find the ridge in the dark.

"Shut up," Nicole bites, and hopes it's just loud enough to get picked up.

"Officer Haught, back up is en route."

Nicole finally finds the switch and flips it with a touch too much zeal. Nedley'll loose his mind; they're never supposed to turn off their radios in the field. Let him, Nicole thinks, he's not the one out here, alone, because his boss doesn't know how to structure a goddamn roster. If she weren't so busy being scared, she'd be deeply and truly annoyed.

Nicole returns her other hand to its place and immediately the gun feels lighter again. It's a small relief.

Nicole sees rustling in the bushes ahead, a sharp and unnatural shadow. The procedure is to announce herself as a member of the police force, but it's not like she'll get a response.

The road is about a quarter mile behind her, but Nicole can hear the sirens as back up starts to arrive. Nicole winces. All the sound and the lights is likely to do is cause it to freak out, and Nicole still wants to capture it alive. The gun is supposed to be a last resort, but most of her co-workers disagree with her on that point.  If they see it before she does, there's no way she'll be able to bring it in.... alive, or whatever.

"Come out," Nicole figures the noise has given her away already.

There's a slim to none chance of her speaking doing anything, but it makes her feel a little better, at least. She sees the rustle again, getting bigger in the foliage, coming toward her.

Nicole adjusts her position. She tenses and relaxes her fingers, lets the movement travel up her arms. She pops out the nitrogen in her elbow and can feel it click.

"Come out," Nicole says again. Again, the rustling. Maybe just the tone helps, even if the words don't, Nicole thinks. Dogs come when you call, after all.

Nicole can hear the chorus of voices getting louder and see the rogue, shaking beams of light as the other officers come closer across the field. She figures she has maybe a minute before they're next to her, and they won't think before shooting.

"Come on..." Nicole isn't sure if she's talking more to it or to herself, and for a second the rustling stops, changes direction. It's walking away, Nicole thinks, it's getting away.

She steps closer, comes right up to the tree line. She can't see how deep in it is so she can only go by sound. It's close. A bit lower than eye level. Crouching, maybe. Nicole's struck by an image of a grey hand darting out of the bushes and grabbing onto her shirt, her hand, pulling her into the foliage, but she knows that's just the B grade horror movies she's seen talking. They're slow. Thank fuck for that.

Nicole turns her beam on when the voices get close enough to form distinct word. The second it's turned on, Nicole finds her mark.

She tells it apart by colour rather than form. Where the trees are all deep and solid in the dark - greens and blacks and navys - it's pale. Not bright, not light, just.... pale. Artificially so, like there's a light source somewhere that she can't identify, that doesn't make sense. Its skin seems to be one tone, like someone stripped out all the highlights and all the shadows and left a watery, off white translucence.

"There you are."

Nicole keeps on hand on her gun as the other drops to her tazer. This time, thank god, she doesn't need to fumble around in the dark.

She pulls it out and swears she can feel it buzzing in her hand, all the energy inside there. Nicole steps just to the left. It's hidden behind two trees, and the gap between them is so narrow that Nicole's sure at least one of the prongs would get caught up in it. Even after she's moved, she gives a frustrated huff. She needs a clearer shot - there's just too much in the way.

The other officers are almost on her now, voices full of a kind of excitement that strikes her as in bad taste.

It's the first call they've had like this is about three months, so she gets it, but she still doesn't think it's right to be so.... glib. Nicole's just glad she got to be the first one on the scene.

Nicole sets her jaw. She'll have to go in.

"Haught, where did it- hey!"

Lenny calls after her just as she steps into the darkness of the trees. He steps into where her foot prints just were only a second after she vacates them, but won't go any further than that.

As soon as she gets past the line of the trees it feels like stepping through a barrier. The sound from the field doesn't reach her as much, neither does the light. Despite the four guys just behind her, Nicole feels alone. Alone... with it. She swings her torch beam again and almost misses it; it doesn't land on its skin but on its jacket, a dark scuffed up leather than sucks up all the light that touches it. Nicole doesn't wait for it to turn around again. They're slow, but they're strong, and she's close enough to grab.

Nicole discharges her taser. It hits, and the thing starts to convulse. It makes a sound somewhere between a scream and a grunt as it falls over onto the forest floor, muscles all locked up in spasm. A mess of clenched teeth and curled fingers digging into the dirt.

Nicole waits three seconds to make sure, and walks up to it.

Lenny must have heard the noise, because he finally catches up to her.

"Are you alright?" He asks. He's swinging his torch around and turning his head, trying to piece together what just happened. Eventually, his beam falls on the body on the ground, still twitching from the electricity.

"Found it!" he calls back behind him, and the other officers breach through the bushes a second later. Lenny aims his gun.

"No!" Nicole grabs his wrist as he aims, "What're you doing? Don't shoot."

In his surprise, Lenny drops his torch and it lands on the ground, the beam still on. Now that the light is stable, Nicole can see more. There are details on the jacket, an intricate pattern of stitching around the shoulders. Obscuring the pattern, hair. Black or brown, long and messy.

"Just let me take.... her in."

Lenny raises an eyebrow, but lowers his gun. He steps back and out of her way. Nicole's boots crunch leaves and sticks underfoot as she walks.

It... she's on the ground, cheek on the dirt and seeming rather disinterested in getting up again. Nicole has her gun ready in case it becomes necessary, but the taser seems to have done its job well enough.

Nicole walked around her to where her hands are. She pulls her hand cuffs from her belt. Normally, she'd be barking orders, telling the perp exactly where and how to get into position. She knows it won't do any good now.

Nicole crouches down, still light on her haunches in case she needs to jump up and out of the way.

Lenny's standing over them, gun still in hand. Watching.

"You wanna help, Lenny, or you just wanna stare?"

Nicole says without looking at him, keeping her eyes pointed down.

"I, uh..." Lenny rubs one of his hands on his pants as he steps back. Nicole doesn't miss how he turns her head away just a fraction, like he doesn't want to inhale. He pulls his hands closer to his body.

"Come on, don't be so precious," Nicole says. She grabs one wrist. The movement is fast and the contact is full, her whole hand wrapping around. Lenny's face tightens a muscle in his jaw jumps. He looks uncomfortable for her.

"Lenny. You know it isn't contagious." Nicole said, even as she knew she'd be handling this one on her own. What you knew to be true and what you felt could be too very different things, Nicole was well aware. In the beginning, she had been just as squeamish about touching them as he was. It had taken a long time to undo what years of movies had taught her.

 Nicole slipped one cuff around the left wrist, and then reached for the right. She kept one arm steady, trying not to move it too much. For as dangerous as the situation had seemed a minute ago, Nicole remember her training. They were fragile. They didn't have the same elasticity. Nicole didn't plan on tearing its hand off by being too rough.

She slipped the other cuff around the other wrist and rose to her feet, dusting her hands off on her pants. While she wasn't afraid of contact, it wasn't exactly pleasant, either - Nicole would be stuck with the smell on her hands until she could get back to the station to wash it off. And even then, it tended to linger. Maybe it'd finally be enough of an excuse to get a new uniform if she had to burn this one.

"Come on, Lenny."

Lenny hangs back until Nicole's gaze gets too intense. He gives in and helps, under her direction, but he only touches lightly, like he doesn't want to get anything but his fingertips dirty. Nicole rolls her eyes.

"On three." Nicole says, "One, two..."

They lift on her final count, and get it into a more or less standing position. Nicole tries to get an arm around it's back the way you might carry a drunk friend, but it's not easy. It's dead weight, Nicole thinks. Pun intended.

"Michael!" Nicole calls ahead to the officer still outside in the field, "Bring the car around here. Can't carry this all the way there."

Nicole doesn't hear a response, but the young officer turns around and runs in the direction of the blue-red-blue light a second later. Nicole shifts. Her shoulder aches. It's been a long night, and it's not over.

///

“Looks like it’s your lucky day, Marcus.”

The prisoner’s head snaps up as he hears the door open and the voice come with it. It's the same officer from before, the red headed one who apparently missed the memo that the police in Purgatory are supposed to take their jobs with a grain of salt.

_Great._

"Here to treat me to some good ol' fashion police brutality, officer.... what's it? Height?"

"Haught." Nicole stops in front of his cell, plants her feet firmly on the linoleum. There's an odd friction when she walks on it in her boots. It's almost pleasant, sometimes.

"Quite the opposite. Looks like we'll have to wait until the next time you act like a drunk idiot in public."

Nicole steps forward and for all his practiced one liners, all his seething after her after she'd locked him up, Marcus couldn't help but flinch. She was taller than him, for one, but seemed bigger than him in every way he could think of.

She'd been much too thorough in his processing for him to seriously worry about her breaking the rules of police conduct, but he was... confused, to say the least.

Nicole lifted something from her belt and for a second Marcus thought it was her gun, before he heard it jangle. Nicole slipped the key into place and turned it, and have the door a hard pull.

It didn't slide open so much as scraped, the harsh sound of metal and metal grating and loud in the past-midnight air.

"You're free to go," Nicole slipped the keys back into her place on her belt, "You're lucky that lady you yelled at doesn't want to press charges, anyway."

Marcus didn't step outside of the cell. He stood still, in place, uncertain. Was this... a game? A joke? A test? He looked to Nicole for the answer.

She sighed.

"We need the cell," she admitted, her tone and the way she glanced at Nedley's office betraying that this was clearing _not_ her decision.

Marcus shuffles his feet. He ducks just his out, and looks either way outside of his shell.

"What do you mean, need the cell? You can fit, like..." Marcus turns out and mouths something, "Like five guys in here, at least."

Nicole steps back from the still open jailhouse door. From the long corridor, Nicole can already hear the groaning.

"Oh, trust me," Nicole says. Marco's ears twitch at the noise, something deeply unnatural about it, "You don't wanna be rooming with her."

The door opens. There's three officers, all dressed in blue, all barely managing to contain their... prisoner.

"Get out, Marcus."

Nicole steps out of the way while he peers over her shoulder, his eyes trying to adjust. She's just moving so fast, hardly more than a blur, and it's like the more he looks the more she falls apart, he can't tell...

"Fuck!" All at once Marcus leaps across the boundary of his cell, feeling his skin start to itch, "Fucking Christ, man, you should…. Fucking..” he gestures wildly, like he isn’t entirely in control of his own body, “..fucking _shoot it_ , dude, why aren’t you….”

His eyes find Nicole’s gun on her belt and before he can even think, he’s reaching for it. Nicole is even faster, and grabs him around the wrist before he manages anything.

“No, no,” Nicole says, “This is a particular horse you don’t wanna look in the mouth. Get.” Nicole points to the doorway at the end of the office, the backdoor just through it. Marcus bolts, pushing through the door and leaving it swinging as he exits the building.

Nicole checks the cell door. She pulls it open as far as it will go, and steps back. The shadow of the thing is writhing, and Lenny mutters something about how they ‘should put it down back in the field.’

Nicole straightens her back out. The officers try to guide it into the cell but Nicole stops them for a second. She eyes the things jacket. It’s more than a long shot, it’s a hail mary pass, but stranger things have happened.

“Hold her arm to the side. Watch the nails,” Nicole says as she snakes her arm around the things waist. She finds the first pocket empty, and deflates for a second. She checks the second. Bingo.

Nicole flips open the wallet. The money’s no good – torn and eroded from friction- but that’s not what Nicole’s looking for.

“Okay, put her in.”

The officers don’t need to be told twice. One of them, the biggest guy, gives a single hard shove that pushes the body forward a couple of feet into the cell and sets it stumbling. It’s enough to knock it off balance, almost flat onto the floor. In normal circumstances, treatment that rough could’ve earned them a lawsuit. As Nicole reads the driver’s license, she doesn’t have the energy to bring them up on it.

“Holy shit.”

///

The call rips through the night time and hits an artery, and all at once Waverly is wide awake and bolt upright in her bed. She can feel it, even then, the energy on the other end of the phone.

_“Waverly?”_

“Nicole? It’s three in the morning.”

_“I know.”_

“Are you okay?”

_“You need to come to the station.”_


	2. Chapter 2

"Wynonna? Wynonna!"

The words reached her through a fog as the pressure on her shoulder tightened, where the doctor's hand was gripping her. Wynonna felt its twin on her other shoulder, accompanied by a hard coldness, both of them moving in synchronicity to try and counter act her movements and keep her still. Her movements were too hard to anticipate, though, and it just ended up making it worse.

"Wynonna, it's okay." He lifted one hand from her shoulder and set something down; Wynonna could hear the weight of it. She realised why she'd felt the cold on her shoulder, the metal barrel of the gun like device he'd used for her injection he been in his hand.

Slowly, her vision started to return. First from all black, then to all white, then slowly starting to register shapes from their edges inward. Wynonna rubbed at her eyes as soon as she thought her hands were steady enough. It was almost painful to have them open, the contrast turned all the way up like stepping out into light after being inside all day.

"Jesus...." Wynonna grabbed at the side her head, where a sharp pain jabbed up at her skull from somewhere deep in her brain.

"Is it gonna be like that every time?"

The doctor, satisfied that there wouldn't be any aftershocks, crossed back to his own side of the desk. Wynonna looked at the arms on her chair on realised the thin strips of raised cotton were from where she'd dug in her nails so hard she'd torn through the fabric. She patted the area lightly, and gave him an apologetic look. If he noticed it, he said nothing.

"It's good, Wynonna..." he sat down and opened one of the folders on his desk. Her folder, if Wynonna had to guess, judging by how he'd flicked his attention between her and it like he was trying to paint her.

"That means it’s working."

Wynonna raised an eyebrow at him. He flicked a page over and continued to read from the folder. She cleared her throat to get his attention, and repeated the gesture.

"Seizures are just moments of extreme brain activity," he explained, "Too much activity for your body to process. More brain activity is exactly what we need from you. Means you're repairing."

Wynonna shifted forward on the chair. "Right..." she said. She turned her eyes down on her own lap and found a loose string at the hem, just enough for her to pick at.  It was pale blue; same as all the clothes she'd been given. "That makes sense. But the... the..." Wynonna wiggled her fingers next to her head.

"That's normal. All sorts of strange neurological events are quite normal. You might experience hallucinations, auditory or visual, as well as strange thoughts and changes in your patterns of behaviour. Nuerotryptalin is a hell of a drug." He said. The doctor closed her folder and pulled open a drawer on his desk with one hand. He rifled through it for a second, his mouth moving with some sort of count, and slid her file in somewhere between them.

"...and the development was somewhat... rushed. We still aren't aware of all of the side effects. Lesser of two evils, I suppose."

Wynonna detected a hint of passion in his voice that had been absent before. It seemed these were thoughts he'd had before, evidence of a deep and unexamined annoyance. He looked up at her over his glasses, locked his fingers together on his desk. Wynonna realised he wasn't actually looking at her, but at the clock above the door behind her.

"For you, as well. The side effects are better than the alternative. You don't want to be someone who doesn't respond to Nuerotryptalin."

He smirked and leaned forward in a way that was entirely unfunny. When he seemed to realise that, he sat back, doctor mask back in place after his unsuccessful attempt to break character.

"I'm approving you for discharge," he continued, back on script. "You'll have to take your injection daily, and return here every week for a review. Here..." he grabbed a pen and signed his name at the bottom of a slip of paper before handing it back over to her, "...is your prescription. We'll provide you with your first week's supply, in case you don't have time to get to a chemist. Any questions?"

Wynonna sat back, mind still caught on that first sentence. "Discharge?" she asked, drawing the word out, even though she was already well aware of its meaning.

"Yes," he said "Tomorrow. You're going home."

Wynonna pulled hard at the stray strand of cotton she'd been playing with. It unravelled a good couple of inches, bringing other strings loose with it.

"Wait, but... I don' have a car... or like, literally anything, I don't know...."

"We've contacted your next of kin. If my memory serves me that was your sister.... _Wendy_?"

"Waverly." Wynonna corrected him quickly, a sharp edge to her tone. "Waverly is... so you told her? She knows that I'm...." Wynonna gestured down at her whole body.

"We told her when you were first identified, months ago. She'll be coming to collect you at ten am."

Wynonna wanted to grab onto her head. It felt like her headache was coming back again, but stronger.

"So Waverly's known.... for _months_... and you didn't tell me?"

The doctor sighed. "You wouldn't have understood us up until a week ago." He said, ending it with finality. He looked again at the clock above her head.

"Doctor, I'm not... I don't think I'm ready to go back yet, I can't... I don't feel like I can..."

Wynonna felt too exposed in the middle of the room. The pale blue was too close to her skin tone, and if she let her eyes unfocused the borders between them started to blur. His desk was a dark, deep and solid red and seemed to tint everything else in the room the same warm way. Only she was cold. The contrast felt like a spot light.

"That's exactly why I know you're ready," he said, "You're feeling."

"But, I... what if the medicine stops working, or if I can't do it, if I need to come back how do-"

"That won't happen. Provided you take it as instructed. You will be fine, Wynonna."

Wynonna had a million objections resting on her tongue. There was too much energy in her body, which she put down to the injection, and it gathered in her arms and her legs and made her fidgety. She started to bounce her leg up and down, just enough for the doctor to notice.

"You'll be fine." The doctor forced his mouth into a thin and sharp smile, that didn't reach his eyes in the least. Wynonna stilled her legs. She gripped onto the arm rests as she rose, and again mumbled a sorry when she exposed the scratches.

Wynonna wasn't even halfway to the door when she heard him open his draw and reach for the next patient's file. Wynonna wrapped her hand around the metal door knob and couldn't even feel how cold it was. She opened the door, almost directly into the chest of whoever was next in line. Wynonna flattened herself against the wall so he, a pretty big guy, could pass by her. He didn’t even say thank you.

Wynonna felt eyes on her as she walked. She tugged at her own shirt, a motion that would’ve tightened her jacket around herself if she’d had one on. But she kept forgetting.

///

“Blue or brown?”

“Huh?”

Wynonna looked down at the man behind the table. Despite the fact that she was standing and he was sitting, giving her the clear higher ground, Wynonna was sure she was the one being looked down on. He wore the hospital uniform, and pinned above the left-side pocket, a nameplate that read Adam.

“What colour were your eyes?” Adam blinked for a notably long time, and Wynonna felt the impulse the copy him. Wynonna had seen him from the back of the line, and that must’ve been an hour and a half ago. Who know how long he was there before she arrived. Wynonna gives him the benefit of the doubt, and decided that must be why he sounds so pissy. “Blue or brown?”

He enunciated too much and Wynonna’s first thought was how easy it’d be to mock his speech.

“Uh, b..brown?” Wynonna said. She wanted to say that they were more green, actually, or hazel, but Adam’s demeanour made it clear he didn’t want to hear it. Adam reached under the table and returned with a small box in hand, all white and without any discernable marking.

“Coloured contact lenses. Instructions are in the box. Next!”

He pushed the box forward and Wynonna picked it up. She held it in her hand, awkwardly in front of her body, not having a bag or anywhere to put it.

“So I just….” Wynonna trailed off, realising that Adam wasn’t paying any attention to her. “Right. Thanks.” Wynonna clicked her tongue and turned away.

She shrugged her shoulder back, rolling it. The seam of her shirt wasn’t sitting right. She was only just realising it, and remembered how the doctor had explained the effects of Nuerotryptalin to her. She wondered if this was one of them.

Wynonna held the box close to her chest as she walked, tracing the way back to her room. It was temporary, and she had to share with someone else, but it wasn’t awful, actually. Wynonna had seen more than her fair share of the inside of institutions like this, and she had to admit that this was one of the better ones. Arguably, it was an improvement from her previous living situation. The irony.

Halfway there, someone grabbed her arm as she was passing down a corridor. Yeah, Wynonna thought, she was definitely more sensitive.

“Hey, watch-“ Wynonna caught herself as she spun around. It was an orderly that had stopped her, marked out by the white, over-starched uniform he wore. Wynonna tried again. “Hi, looking for me?” Wynonna tried to give her most polite smile. The man winced, just for a second, and Wynonna wasn’t even mad at him. She forgot what she looked like, sometimes, and the mirror in her room had triggered a similar reaction in her a few times. Wynonna straightened out her face.

“What can I do for you?”

“You can’t go in there.” The orderly let go of her arm. With his other hand, he pointed down the hall, in the direction she had just been walking.

“Can’t go in…. where?”

“Your room.”

Wynonna put her instant reaction on hold for a moment, but kept the sharp one liner she had for him in the back of her mind. She looked him up and down, trying to figure out if he was joking, being a dick, or just doing his job. Cussing out an orderly wouldn’t do her much good, despite her long ingrained history of reactions when it came to authority figures.

“Why… not?” she asked.

The orderly paused. He rolled her jaw like he was chewing on his options.

“It’s your roommate,” he said.

“Is Marissa okay?” Wynonna cut in quickly. She hadn’t spoken much to her roommate, admittedly, but that was part of the reason she liked her. They both valued privacy, their own space. Neither of them pushed for interaction. Most importantly, they both liked the same sleeping conditions: fan off, window open, door open two and a half inches. Wynonna had slept next to enough people to know a match like that was harder than finding a kidney donor.

“Well… umm…” the orderly looked down the hallway. Wynonna could just see her own door, distinguished from the others by the shoe’s left just outside. He turned around and, with a hand hovering over her back but not touching, ushered Wynonna back in the way she’d just come from.

“What happened to her?”

The orderly’s face twitched, and he didn’t respond.

“Where are you-“

“I’m taking you back to administration, so they can find you a new room. I saw you’re getting out tomorrow, congratulations, but you still need somewhere to stay for the night.”

“Why can’t I stay in my room?”

“You can’t go in there.” The orderly stated.

“Why _not_?” Wynonna stopped walking. If the orderly wasn’t going to help her, then she wasn’t going to make his job easy, either. “What happened to Marissa?”

The orderly sighed. Wynonna watched his hand pass over his belt and flick something on his pager. The green light on the plastic went out.

“Your roommate… did not respond to Nuerotryptalin, in the way we had hoped.”

Wynonna’s stomach dropped. She already knew what he went, the pathway of the conversation clear in her mind and all routes lead to Marissa getting shot in the head on the concrete area outside none of the employees would talk about. She knew, but she had to ask.

“Wait… so she…”

“Your roommate became… aggressive. It tried to attack staff that came to check after someone was missing in morning headcount.”

“She was… Fine, this morning. When I left. She didn’t… try anything, or…”

“Yeah, but you’re you,” the orderly spoke quickly. They had stopped just under a fluorescent light and the illumination made his skin look horribly pale. Wynonna could only imagine how much worse she looked, “They don’t attack their own kind.”

Wynonna grit her teeth down. She felt the back of her eyes get hot. She’d only known Marissa less than a week… that she could remember, anyway… but _shit_.

“Goddamn…” Wynonna said under her breathe. The orderly started walking again and she followed him, keeping her head down low all the way to the administration block.

///

Her new bed was a considerable step down, and Wynonna slept like a baby – that is to say, very intermittently. She was up and awake before the sun rose, well aware she wouldn’t be able to get to sleep again with the pillows that were too high and the springs that creaked and the air that smelled just…. Weird.

 These hours in the morning were the worst for her: she couldn’t go back to sleep, but she couldn’t really do anything else, either. She was supposed to stay in her room until morning headcount, and couldn’t just wonder around as she wanted to. She tried to once before, in her old room, and found that door was locked from the outside. Even Wynonna knew that was just a fire hazard waiting to happen.

As much as they’d all insisted this wasn’t a prison, Wynonna had had enough experience to recognise the similarities. Yeah, the guards used your first name and the cells had carpet, but there’s only so much you could do to dress up the situation.

There was no internet inside, either. Not that Wynonna had her phone or any clue where the hell on God’s green earth she might find it. When she’d first become lucid enough to have a conversation with, some nurse or other had offered her a Sudoku book. Wynonna, in all her infinite wisdom and wit, had told her to fuck off.

Now she sat on the edge of her bed, sleeves rolled up and staring at the insides of her arms, wishing she had anything to do beside think. Wynonna yanked her sleeves down, too fast, and winced. She got up to her feet and crossed to the other side of the room, the side with the window, like she suddenly had a mission.

With the end of her sleeve, she rubbed herself out a little circle to look out of in the condensation.

The area was pretty enough, or might have been in better weather. She guessed it was winter by the snow, but they might just have been closer to Purgatory than she thought. Wynonna had lived in a lot of places in her life, and nowhere had ever been as cold, as consistently as her hometown. It felt like a metaphor sometimes. Like someone had planned it.

Most of the trees and plants were dead, except for the evergreens, but even the dead ones were pretty in a way. They’d been planted purposely around the road that led up to the complex, and next to that, empty fields. And then the concrete slab where Wynonna heard the gunshot at 2AM.

Wynonna wondered which side of the border she was actually on, as she walked to the bathroom, and just how far Waverly would have to drive to get her. 

The bathroom cabinet didn’t have doors, and only had a couple of things on it. Wynonna turned the tap on and splashed some water onto her face, all without looking up at the mirror. It never worked like in the face wash ads on TV, and Wynonna ended up with a mess of lukewarm water running down her arms and chin and dripping onto her shirt. She grabbed the hand towel and padded her face dry, then dabbed it onto her chest to try and get the worst of it out.

Wynonna felt around in the cabinet for the little white box she’d gotten yesterday. This part would definitely require looking in a mirror. Wynonna sighed.

Lacking confidence had never been her issue, and she hated fitting into the cliché of ‘girl who hates the way she looks’. It’s not that she hated it, exactly, but there were… extraordinary circumstances. Objectively, it just looked _weird_. Wynonna supposes that’s what the contacts were supposed to help with. She got the instructions out and they made it seem easy, so Wynonna only skimmed them and looked at the pictures.

Following the instructions, Wynonna washed her hands well. She opened the box and found a series of smaller packets, like bubble covered with foil on one end. She grabbed the edge and peeled it up, and saw the coloured brown circle stuck to the bottom on the convex surface. Wynonna set it next to the sink and leaned forward. She fished it out with her fingertip and, with her left hand, held her eye open. She had to lean in.

Almost immediately, it was too much. Her eyes were hard to handle at just a glance, and open like that, that close… the detail was worse than the big picture. From far away, in certain lights, Wynonna could convince herself that it was just a light green, that the yellow was just flecks. From fat enough away, her pupil still looked whole and round, not like someone had hit popped it and let the void drip down her eye.

Wynonna shook it off. She’d have to get over it eventually.

It ended up not being nearly as easy as the pamphlet made it look. She kept on blinking too hard, and when she actually managed to touch her eye, the contact would just stick to her finger. The first time she got it in, she realised it’d flipped the wrong way, and she had to do the whole thing over again. Finally, the first one was finished. Wynonna did a bit better on the next, and sincerely hoped it was something you got used to doing.

When she looked in the mirror again, she actually raised her eyebrows. At herself. Alone, in her room. It was comical, but not even performative… her skin was still off and now the whites were red from all the touching, but it made a world of difference. She didn’t quite look like herself – green eyes, maybe hazel, but not brown – but she looked… better. If not good, then human, at least. Someone might even mistake her for someone just terminally ill, Wynonna thought, genuinely warm at the notion.

Wynonna blinked a couple of times to make sure they were good and in place. It still felt odd, but the booklet had said to expect that. She wiped away the beginnings of tears that had started to form from poking at her eyes.

Next, she grabbed the cover up mouse. It was supposed to match her skin tone, but Wynonna didn’t trust the fifty something guy who’d given it to her to _really_ know her shade.

Applying it was much easier than the contacts. She’d never had to use those before, but she along with every girl her age in Purgatory had all gone through the same simultaneous phase of way overdoing the cover-up. This was an oddly sticky, odd smelling, odd circumstances walk down memory lane. She blended it in around her neck and ended up applying it there, too. On all of her visible skin until it disappeared under her shirt. Wynonna rubbed at the back of her neck, and wondered if she’d have to get someone else to do the back. At least she could just wear her hair down in the meantime.

Wynonna washed the excess off her hands and dried them. It was a bit much, and not exactly the right tone, but far closer to what she was supposed to look like that her au natural look. She’d gotten some of it around the collar of her shirt. Wynonna sighed and stripped down as she walked back into the main room. She grabbed the only other shirt she owned from where she’d hung it up, and quickly changed, dropping the dirty one onto the floor. As soon as she got out, the first thing she had planned was a shopping trip.

At the bottom of the closet was the bag she’d been given. One bag that contained everything she currently owned. Honestly, it wasn’t even the first time she’d been in that situation. Wynonna grabbed it out and tossed it on her bed. She zipped it open, and tossed her contacts and the mouse in there. On her nightstand was the temporary ID they’d given her, kind of pointless since it was hardly legally binding, and a copy of the King James Bible. Wynonna was sure there was some sort of joke, or some sort of offence, to be found there but she didn’t have the energy to look for it. She grabbed her ID and slipped it into the bag’s side pocket.

Wynonna looked back at the Bible. She wasn’t sure what made her walk over there and pick it up. There was no creasing on the spine, all the pages still fresh and sealed. She wasn’t sure what made her put it in her bag, either. Maybe just the weight of it made her feel like she had more than she did. Wynonna threw the bag over the shoulder. It was still light.

The clock read five minutes before nine. Wynonna tried the door, found it unlocked, and took that as permission to go outside.

She ducked her head out of the corridor first, and found no one else in the hall way. For all she knew, everyone else was still asleep. It seemed not everyone had the same trouble she had getting rest, so Wynonna couldn’t blame that on her condition. It’s not like it was new, anyways.

Wynonna pulled the door closed behind her with a soft click. Her shoes had rubber soles and the squeaking on the wood as she walked was unavoidable, but slowing down helped. It’s not like she was in much of a rush.

An itch started just below her nose and Wynonna went to scratch it, before she remembered all the cover-up she had on. She pulled her hand back, and tried to scrunch up her face to get it, to no avail.

The new wing she’d been temporarily moved too had a fairly similar layout to her old one: she guessed they all did. As far as she could tell, this section was only for those that were already about the get discharged, as all she’d seen while the orderly led her through were more and more single rooms.

Wynonna rounded a corner and came face to face with an orderly. This one she recognised – a woman who seemed just out of college, blonde hair in a tight braid. She was in the room when Wynonna had first… been treated. Holding down her left side. Wynonna still felt bad about trying so hard to smack her in the face.

“Wynonna.” The orderly said, her tone far too light and bright for this time of day. Whatever feeling Wynonna had about their first meeting, she didn’t seem to hold a grudge about it.  “You look…” the orderly’s face was wide open, eyebrows high and smile extending with the second, “You look really good, Wynonna, with the contacts and the…”

“Thanks,” Wynonna cut her off. She knew she was just trying to be nice, but Wynonna had developed quit an allergic reaction to certain types of compliments, especially when they were tinted with that little note of surprise, “Were you… looking for me?”

“Ah, yes,” the orderly continued. Wynonna couldn’t help but notice that she seemed just a bit more convivial than she was before, and wondered just how much the makeup had to do with that, “I was just coming to fetch you. I see you already have your bag.”

Wynonna adjusted it on her shoulder. “Yep, all packed up.” She managed a smile as she patted its side.

“Good, good…” the orderly mimicked her smile, trailing off into silence. She didn’t turn, didn’t lead Wynonna anywhere, or tell her where to go. The quiet turned uncomfortable as they stood still, Wynonna unwilling to pass, unable to think of anything else to say.

“Are you excited to go home?” The orderly broke the silence. Wynonna bit down on her lower lip. It was obvious question. Small talk, even.

Wynonna had no idea what to answer.

“My sister’s picking me up,” she said, “I haven’t seen her in….” Wynonna mouthed out the months as she counted back, “… a while.”

“Well,” the orderly laid a hand on Wynonna’s arm. Her body heat was so much more pronounced now that Wynonna had none of her own. It felt like that part of her bicep was in danger of sunburn, caught in a solid ray of light for too long, “… I’m sure she’s excited to see you.”

///

“It’s just up here.”

“No it’s not, we missed the turn off.”

“Well why didn’t you tell me when we were at the turn off?” Nicole squeezed the steering wheel tight in left hand, the right busy fiddling with the radio to try turn it to a channel that had a slightly higher ratio of music to static.

“I _did_ ,” Waverly scrolled up on her phone, tracing back the blue line that marked the route they were supposed to take, “You weren’t listening.”

“I was, what you _said_ was-“

“Wait!” Waverly jerked up in her seat and Nicole was thankful for the defensive driving course she’d had to take as part of her training. She kept them straight on the road even as her heart jumped at Waverly’s exclamation.

“That’s it, right up there,” Waverly leaned forward in her chair and brought her finger almost all the way up to the window. Nicole followed where she was pointing, and saw the sign at the side of the road: PDS TREATMENT FACILITY, in all white lettering against a black board. Just above it, the institutions logo, consisting of a generic and meaningless pair of hands around an abstract representation of a human brain.

Nicole turned on her flicker and slowed as they reached it.

“Well, they sure don’t make it easy.”

Nicole took the turn, passing through gates that had been left open. The asphalt turned darker, fresher. Quite the opposite of the dirt road she’d been subconsciously expecting.

“I suppose it makes sense they’d built it way out here,” Waverly turned her head to look out of the window. There were trees planted all the way up the road, at even intervals. The whole facility couldn’t be more than a couple of years old, and Waverly wondered how they’d gotten that big that fast. “You know. In case.”

They were the only car on the road, had been for the last half hour. Nicole had been so mistrustful of the GPS that Waverly had insisted on taking over navigation duties, letting Nicole behind the wheel of her Jeep instead.

“It’s… nice out here,” Waverly said. The scenery hadn’t changed massively since they’d left Purgatory. There had only been a few points where the snow thinned out much, and the evergreens has bordered the road on either side for pretty much the entire drive.  The Rockies were still in view, just from a different angle, “I was expecting… I don’t know, armed guards.”

Nicole nodded. There was one watchtower higher up on the hill, and another gate between them and the facility, but the building did look… decent.

Waverly remembered another drive like this, Wynonna again at the end of it. Her in the backseat, Gus and Curtis in the front. The long, dirt road to the juvenile detention centre. How she’d started to plan an escape in her head while the guard checked their ID, just for fun, and come up with nothing.

Nicole shifted gear as the hill got steeper, and rested her hand on the clutch. Waverly covered it with her own. She brushed lightly over Nicole’s knuckles with her thumb.

Nicole kept her eyes on the road.

“How’re you… feeling, about it?”

The road started to straighten out, and the trees thinned out. Waverly sat back into her seat. The seat belt dug into her chest.

“…good…” Waverly said. She folded her hands together in her lap, “I’m… excited for you to meet her.”

“Technically,” Nicole tilted her head, and guided the car around the final bend before the complex came into view, “I already met her.”

Waverly shot her a look. She raised one hand to complete a ‘don’t shoot’ with only one side of her body.

“Technically.”

Seeing that they’d arrived, Waverly shut off the GPS on her phone.

From the outside, it almost looked like a boarding school. The walls were brick, with horizon paned windows evenly spaced out across it. It looked almost as tall as it was wide.

There were signs with arrows, obviously temporary, put up around the place. ‘PDS FAMILIES’ one read and pointed them down the turn they had to take. Down a while, a man stepped out onto the road. His uniform looked close to the one Nicole wore, but not quite. Nicole slowed down the car as they approached him, and rolled down the window.

“Hello,” Nicole spoke first. Waverly refreshed her phone to see if the signal was any better now.

“Hi,” the guard replied, “Are you here to collect a relative?”

Nicole nodded. She was ready to say more, but the man didn’t seem all the interested. He directed them down further, telling them where the best parking was, and to enter the building marked with the letter C where they’d find a clerk behind a desk.

Nicole thanked him, and drove on. She found the parking lot he’d talked about, and pulled into the closest open spot to the entrance. It was less than a quarter full. Nicole wondered just how much staff they had, because it sure didn’t seem to be enough for a building that size.

Nicole turned off the car and rested both hands on the steering wheel. The second the heat shut off, they felt it. Waverly pulled her scarf tighter around herself. She slipped her phone into the glove compartment, prepared for the possibility of having it confiscated.

“How… is she gonna feel, ya know, about us?” Nicole had had the question in the back of her head for the past couple of days, but had never brought it up. Waverly didn’t need another thing to worry about, “I mean… do you think she’ll be alright… with it?”

Waverly grabbed Nicole’s hand in her own. The heat was nice.

“I don’t know,” Waverly said. She’d been thinking the same thing. Last time Wynonna had seen her, she’d had Champ hanging off her like a leech stuck on her neck, and she’d been doing a pretty good job of pretending to be into it, “It’s kind of an odd way to meet your sister in law.”

Nicole smirked; it was still too serious to actually laugh.

“I think she’d like you,” Waverly said, “I think… well, we’ll find out soon, won’t we?”

The condensation was coming on quickly. The window was almost all obscured with it now. Waverly reach out a finger to the glass, but it was on the wrong side.

“Are you sure you want me to go in? You know, at first? I can wait in the car.”

“No,” Waverly answered immediately, almost a reflex. Her hand twitched over Nicole’s, “No, I… I want you there. Moral support.”

Waverly left out the part where Nicole’s presence was the only way she’d even made it this far. Nicole was good at talking to people. She knew what to say. Waverly was afraid she wouldn’t. That she’d see Wynonna for the first time in six years, and they’d hug, look at each other, and realise they were strangers.

“Are you ready?” Nicole turned her head and gave her a soft smile.

Waverly nodded, and stepped out of the car. She grabbed her bag and slung it over her shoulder.

“We’re early.”

Nicole checked her watch. “Not by much.”

She got out of the car and slipped the keys into her pocket. They irritated her, so she took them out and handed them over to Waverly instead. Nicole never carried her own bag, but Waverly always did.

Nicole waited for her up on the curb, and Waverly stepped into her open arm. Nicole was wearing less than her; she always ran hot, and Waverly appreciated it. They walked to the entrance and Nicole found the ‘C Block’ written on the door, before pushing the door open and holding it for Waverly.

The heating inside was an immediate relief. They’d only been out in the cold for the few seconds between the car and the door. Sometimes it shocked Waverly just how quick you could freeze.

Sure enough, Waverly found the clerk where the guard had said he’d be. They must have quite obviously looked like tourists, because Waverly barely had to open her mouth before he guessed what they were here for.

“Just take a seat,” he pointed toward the leather chairs set out in a small waiting room in the foyer, “And congratulations.” He finished with a smile and the phone ran a second later. Waverly mouthed a silent ‘thank you’ as he answered.

_Congratulations._

Waverly replayed what he’d said. _Yes, looking from the outside…._ Waverly dropped Nicole’s hand as she took her seat. _Who wouldn’t want this?_

Waverly had just settled down when she heard footsteps coming down the hall toward her. Immediately, her heart jumped. She looked at the clock: it was still half an hour early. She wasn’t ready. This wasn’t how she’d planned it in her head. Waverly’s entire body froze as she saw the shadow appear on the wall. There had to be more paperwork to sign, or something. Not like this. She wasn’t _ready_. 

Nicole caught her panic and put her hand on her shoulder. Waverly grabbed it immediately and leaned into her side. The shadow came closer, and a voice with it. Waverly dropped Nicole’s hand when she heard it was a man’s voice, and sat upright in her chair just quick enough to be composed when the man in the lab coat stepped into her view.

He looked directly at her. “Waverly Earp?” he asked. Waverly nodded, her pulse still rising, and grabbed her purse as she stood up. Nicole rose next to her.

“Is this… another sister?” the doctor asked, regarding Nicole.

“Oh, no,” Waverly said, “This is Nicole. She’s my, uh… she’s with me.”

The doctor looked between the two of them.

“I need to speak to you, for a moment,” he said, “Family only.”

“Oh…” the whiplash couldn’t have been good for her heart as Waverly started to get nervous again. Nicole gave her a reassuring smile as she sat back in her chair.

“It’ll be okay, Waves,” Nicole said, “I’ll just wait here. Go with him.”

Nicole turned her back on the doctor while she blew Nicole a kiss. Her jacket felt excessive, almost comical, as she tried to fix where her bag strap was caught between the layers. The doctor lead her through to his office, which was set out like pretty much every doctor’s office Waverly had even been too. There were two open chairs on the opposite side of his desk, and Waverly took the left one.

“How are you today, Miss Earp?” the doctor asked. He didn’t wait for her answer before he moved on, “I’m Wynonna’s doctor. I just need to go over a few things with you, before we let her into your custody.”

Waverly nodded. She had expected something like this. She’d spent three hours on the PDS government website last night, reading all about what she was supposed to expect. She was sure she knew everything he might want to tell her.

“Of course, doctor,” Waverly said.

The doctor waved his mouse around and a second later his computer came to life. Waverly couldn’t see what was on his screen, but he seemed acutely interested whatever it was Waverly could hear him clicking on.

“Earp, Earp…” the doctor scrolled the mouse wheel until he found something, “Ah, here.”

He mouthed out the words slightly and his eyes flicked across the words on the screen. “Right, Wynonna Earp. Given her history, she is not a candidate for solo discharge at this time. She’ll have to live with a guardian for the first six months, at which time we will review her progress.”

Waverly nodded. She’d known that, it wasn’t a shock. Even is Wynonna was a ‘candidate for solo release’, it’s not like she had a job or any prospects to make it on her own.

The doctor scrolled further down, and it sounded like he was reading from a script. “She’ll need to get a weekly injection of Nuerotryptalin. You’ll have to return to your nearest PDS centre for that. The injections and every week and the pills are every day, even on the days she gets the injection. Does that make sense?”

Waverly nodded again. She would resent his patronising tone, if she wasn’t acutely aware of how important this information was. She already knew it, but she could only imagine the consequences if someone else in her position wasn’t as invested as she was.

“It is _very_ important. She can’t miss a single dose. If you think she might forget, you have to remind her. She is legally required to take it, and as her nominated guardian, it your legal obligation to ensure she does.”

“I will,” Waverly says, “I… I know how important it is. I watched that video, on the PDS site. About that… the woman-“

“And her son, yes,” the doctor said, “I hope you can learn from other’s mistakes, Miss Earp.”

The doctor turned from his screen to make solid eye contact with her. “Many people think the pills aren’t necessary, that it’s only the injection that matters. The pills are _very_ necessary; they prepare the grey matter to receive the drug. Without the pills, the injection will be ineffective.”

“I understand,” Waverly made the effort to meet his eyes. She didn’t look away. She kept her voice steady. The doctor, apparently satisfied, continued.

“I’m supposed to give you this,” he pulled out a box from under her desk and reached inside it, pulling out a smaller box. It was rectangular and black and as he pushed it across the table toward her, Waverly read the label. TASER.

This hadn’t been on the website.

“What, uh… what for?” Waverly looked to him for confirmation before she reached out to take it. All the seals were still intact. It was heavier than it looked for its size.

“For an emergency,” the doctor said, “There are instructions inside, but you should probably watch a video-“

“Yeah, I, uh…. My wife’s a cop, I don’t… need one,” Waverly set the box down on the table and brought her hands back to her lap. She rubbed her palm off on her knee. “That won’t be necessary.”

The doctor sighed. He made no move to reach for the box.

“Legally, I have to give you one,” he pushed the box toward her, “You take her and it, or you take neither.”

Waverly opened her mouth to speak.

“I’m sure you won’t need it,” the doctor spoke first, “But it’s really better to have it and not need it than the alternative. _Really_. ”

Waverly still kept her hands clean off the table.

“Look, I just have to give you to box and tick off that step on the sheet, okay,” he leaned in toward her,  “I don’t need to know what you do with it after.”

“I’m not tasing my sister.” Waverly said.

“Miss Earp,” the doctor pushed her chair out. His head aligned just so with the anatomical model behind him that his head entire eclipsed the dummy’s, “if it gets to that point, she won’t be your sister anymore.”

Waverly wet her lips. She reached for the box with just one hand, and put it quickly in her lap. She covered the image on the box with her hand, and when that wasn’t enough, slipped it into her back next to her keys and her purse.

“Excellent, that should be all of it. Please keep notes of how Wynonna is adapting, we’ll discuss her progress when you bring her in next week. She had her last injection at 9AM yesterday, so that’s in six days.”

Waverly counted ahead the days in her head. She’d already put in leave, so she knew she’d be able to take Wynonna in whenever she needed to.

“So, are you ready to see her?”

///

Wynonna had done this walk, or one like it, many times before. The distance between the cell and the open world. The shade of her outfit was a bit more flattering this time, and she didn’t have cuffs on, but this was the hardest time by far.

The decoration started to look less like a hospital and more like an office the closer they got. Evacuation plans became posters, became framed lake scenes. At same stage, the linoleum became wood, with carpet spaced out here and there.

Her doctor was saying something. Wynonna hoped it wasn’t important, because she didn’t catch any of it. The orderly she’d almost attacked was on her other side. Wynonna was glad the two faces sending her off would be familiar, at least, even if they’re not entirely friendly.

The hallway in front opened up. There was a plant pushed against the wall and in front of that, a coffee table. The waiting room. Her doctor was in front and stopped first. He turned to look somewhere Wynonna couldn’t see, but she guessed was a row of chairs from context.

“She’s here,” Wynonna heard him say.

“O-okay.”

Wynonna’s legs locked up, and refused to carry her forward. That was Waverly. That was her voice. A good bit deeper, smoother – the last time she’d seen her was when Waverly was mid-puberty, after all- but it was hers.

The orderly kept walking for a few paces before she realised Wynonna had stopped behind her. She turned around, and seemed to weight it up before rubbing Wynonna’s back.

“Come on,” she leaned in and spoke low, so no one else could hear, “You made it this far.”

The orderly nudged at her back and before Wynonna knew it, she was moving again. _Ready or not._

The first person she was wasn’t Waverly, actually, but a red headed woman she’d never seen before. The woman looked to her side, and said something to where she knew Waverly was. Wynonna blinked before she took a final step forward, and stood still.

“Waverly.”

They locked eyes across the room. Waverly got up, leaving her bag and her wife where they were.

“Wynonna.”

Wynonna didn’t know how to hold herself. It felt so strange to hear her name that way again. It made her skin itch.

Waverly took a step forward. Wynonna couldn’t do the same.

It was hard to even look at her. She looked so much… older. The proportions of her face were the same, but everything else… her hair, her height, how her cheekbones had sharpened… Wynonna couldn’t make the pieces fit.

_God, she must have been…._

Wynonna tried to do the math in her head, but realised she didn’t even have all the pieces. She couldn’t remember the exact date of Waverly’s birthday, or the last time they’d seen each other. They’d told her what year it was, but the number sounded so strange and futuristic that Wynonna wasn’t entirely sure she believed them.

“You look…” Wynonna started, and realised she had no way to finish it. Older? Obviously. But that wasn’t a thing to say.

“…yeah…” Waverly seemed self-aware of her own transformation. Wynonna could tell it was more than just the clothes and the hair and the better make up skills. She held herself differently, too.

“And you…you look good,” Waverly scanned her body up and down, down and up. Wynonna wasn’t sure if she should twirl for her. She kept her hands by her sides, her spine as straight as she could even as she swore she could feel the gravity multiplying. Wynonna started to wonder if her cover up has rubbed off, or a contact slipped out of place. When Waverly spoke again, her voice was underwater, “for a dead girl.”


	3. Chapter 3

“You look good… for a dead girl.”

Wynonna smiled before she realised she was the only one, and it fell from her face quickly. What was she supposed to say to _that_? She wanted to say something funny but came up empty. It seemed even her razor-sharp wit was starting to fail her and wondered if this was something she could blame on the Nuerotryptalin.

“They gave me contacts,” Wynonna explained, opening her eyes wider to demonstrate, “And, uh, cover up mouse. Makes me look…”

“Alive.”

Wynonna nodded her head, half up and half side to side. “More or less.”

Wynonna’s doctor cleared his throat. He looked at Waverly. “We try to avoid words like-“

Wynonna waved him off, “It’s fine, doc. I don’t mind.”

The doctor still looked bothered, but he took a step back.

Wynonna rubbed at the crook of her arm and missed the look Waverly gave the doctor. He stepped back from Wynonna, and so did the orderly, as Waverly stepped forward. Her mouth kept flipping between a smile and a frown as she opened her arms. It took Wynonna a second to remember that gesture – they weren’t supposed to touch much in the centre.

Wynonna walked like her legs were on cogs – robotic, clanky – into Waverly arms. Her arms went up around her back as Waverly did the same, and Wynonna didn’t know how hard she was allowed to press. 

Over Waverly’s shoulder, Wynonna kept seeing that woman with the red hair. The one with a staring problem. She seemed to know Waverly well enough, but Wynonna was sure she wasn’t someone she ever knew before.

“Great,” Wynonna’s doctor cut in as they pulled away, “We just need to get you to sign the discharge paper work, Miss Earp.”

Both Waverly and Wynonna looked at him at the same time.

“Both of you,” he added. The orderly walked behind the front desk and pulled out a clip board and a pen along with it. She handed it to the doctor first, who handed it on the Waverly.

“Just at the bottom, print your name and sign.”

Waverly didn’t read through the document before signing. She saw the blank for ‘patient name’ and pointed it out to Wynonna as she handed it over. Wynonna accepted it, signed, and handed it back to the doctor. He looked it over, and nodded in satisfaction. He made a big move of clicking the pen to retract it, and tucked it securely into his pocket.

“Fantastic,” he handed the clipboard back to the orderly, who disappeared with it down the hall a second later.

He didn’t seem keen to hang around much longer, because he made himself scarce the second the business with done with one last look at Wynonna that said ‘good luck’.

And then they were alone.

“So, uh-“

“It’s good to see you.”

Wynonna nodded, “Yeah, you too.”

The woman behind Waverly stepped forward and Wynonna figured she might as well ask.

“Who’s this? Do I know her?”

Wynonna gestured with her head.

“Oh, uh..” Waverly motioned for Nicole to step forward, and she did, but with a healthy amount of hesitation. Waverly holds her hand out and Nicole locked their fingers together when she’s in range. Wynonna quirks an eyebrow – she noticed.

“This is Nicole Haught,” Waverly glanced over at the woman and then to Wynonna. She swallowed, squeezed Nicole’s hand, “my wife.”

“Your… _wife_?” Wynonna looked between the two of them, running through possible scenarios, but realised there were no two ways of interpreting that. “So, you’re…” _gay_ , is what Wynonna meant, but all that she managed was a vague hand motion that made Wynonna want to cringe at herself. She was sure this wasn’t exactly the best way to react.

Waverly adjusted her bag higher onto her shoulder. When her hand came around the strap, Wynonna could see the ring on it, and started searching for a matching one on Nicole’s. “Yeah, it’s legal now.” Waverly said. Nicole vaguely nodded along, but looked at the floor.

“Like, here?” Wynonna pointed at the ground.

“Everywhere,” Waverly continued, “In the states.”

“ _All_ of them?” Wynonna shifted her centre of gravity forward, started to lean into the conversation. She looked to both sides, like she was about to share a secret, “Even, like... Mississippi?”

“Even Mississippi.”

“Oh,” Wynonna said.

“You missed a lot.”

Wynonna couldn’t stop herself from glancing over at Nicole, noticing the ring on her finger and the matching one Waverly had. Maybe it was rude, but it was a lot to process.

She really had missed a lot.

///

The makeup worked, at least. Wynonna had been sat there for the better part of half an hour and hadn't gotten any more looks than she'd been used to. The waitress, sporting a haircut that made Wynonna realise just how much fashion had changed without her, had even given her a smile. The miracles of modern medicine. And makeup.

Wynonna grabbed Waverly's empty sugar packet from the table where she'd discarded it, and started to systematically dismantle it. Rolling it up, then tearing up what was left too. Waverly was preoccupied with seeming far too interested in stirring her cappuccino.

Waverly looked just about ready to break the silence, mouth half open, when the waitress appeared around the corner with a plate on each hand. Wynonna could swear she saw Nicole mouth a 'thank god', and her posture relaxed immediately.

"Here you go," the waitress said with a smile as she set down two plates. Waverly and Nicole were sat next to each other on one side, Wynonna alone on the other. Nicole was pushed into the side closer to the window with Waverly on the outside. The waitress got their plates confused, so they swapped them around as soon as she left.

Looking at the way Nicole and Waverly looked at each other, Wynonna thought for a second she must've missed something in the interaction. There were words between them, woven into that gaze, and the way Nicole touched her shoulder.

Jesus, they really were married, Wynonna thought.

"Are you... sure you're good?" Waverly said as she picked up her cutlery, gesturing with her head to the comparatively empty space in front of Wynonna. No drink, no food, just a small growing grave yard of salt and pepper and sugar packets and a severely failed attempt and napkin origami.

Wynonna nodded without even listening to the question. Strange how quickly you could adapt to not eating. Wynonna was about to make a quip to that extent when she realised just how many ears were within shot.

"Yeah," she nodded, carefully considering her words, "We don't... remember? My doctor must've told you. Or it should've been in the, like... did you get a pamphlet, or something?"

Waverly had her face scrunched up for just a second. Nicole bumped into her shoulder, and made a chewing motion when she got her attention.

"You don't...oh!" Wynonna could see the exact moment that Waverly realised, and the second after when she got embarrassed.

"Oh, I mean, I'm sorry.... I didn't.. I forgot. We can leave, if you want..."

Waverly had to all but rip her eyes away from her own food. Wynonna almost wanted to laugh.

"No, no," she waved the idea off, "You guys go ahead. It's fine."

Waverly half lowered her cutlery, suddenly awkward. Nicole did not seem to have the same problem, and had put away a handful of chips before she started to properly chew.

Waverly gave her a well-meaning eyeroll that told Wynonna that must've been quiet an on brand move for her.

In a way it was fun, trying to put things together from the pieces. It was solving a puzzle. Wynonna felt like a regular fucking Nancy Drew.

Across the table, Waverly raised her cappuccino and took a sip. It left a trace on her upper lip, and her wife pointed it out, wiped it off with her thumb. Waverly leaned into her hand.

There was a lot in that smile, Wynonna thought, but just as she started to look closer it fell asleep.

“Fuck,” Waverly ripped away from Nicole’s side and immediately reached for her bag. She threw a twenty down on the table and stuffed her wallet back into her bag, “We have to go.”

Wynonna raised her eyebrows. Nicole fixated on her chips, her face a brief flash if disproportionate grief. “Go, why?” Nicole asked.

Waverly nodded in the direction of something behind Wynonna, and Nicole followed with her eyes. In a second, her face was a mirror of Waverly’s, food entirely forgotten after a sharp shake to her order of priorities.

“Shit.”

Wynonna turned her head around and saw nothing interesting. Waverly’s hand on her arm pulled her back.

“No,” Waverly said, “don’t look. Keep your head down. We’re going.”

Nicole hadn’t taken her phone or wallet out in the first place so got up without shuffling around for a moment. She waited for Waverly to shift out first and followed after. The waitress watched them looking to leave in a hurry and made to walk in their direction. Then she decided she didn’t care enough when she noticed the money left on the table – as long as they weren’t trying to skip the bill, it wasn’t her business.

“Pull your hoddie up,” Waverly whisper-yelled to Wynonna.

“What? We’re inside, it’s not that cold-“

“Do it.”

Wynonna relented. Nicole walked ahead of them, and it wasn’t lost on Wynonna how her odd movements seemed to always keep Wynonna directly in her shadow. Wynonna still hadn’t been able to see what they had, and from the way everyone else seemed perfectly happy to keep on eating, she was willing to guess there was no need to be this utterly dramatic.

Nevertheless, Wynonna let herself be pushed forward and out of the diner. Mostly because she didn’t really have any other option – Waverly was her only way back into Purgatory, so they would leave whenever she said they were leaving.

As soon as they stepped onto the parking lot and the sound of their footsteps changed, Wynonna ripped her hoodie down again, “What was that, Wave?”

Waverly looks over Wynonna, eyes high and focused on her wife.

“Do you think he saw?”

Nicole shook her head, “They don’t do quiet and subtle. We’d have heard him complaining.”

“HVF?” Wynonna asked. Waverly opened the door for Wynonna and ushered her in. She went around to the passenger side and got into her own side. Nicole started to car the second her door shut.

“Don’t worry about it, it’s fine,” Waverly’s tone was a contradiction. Wynonna leaned forward, pulling her seat belt out.

Waverly sighed.

“That guy in there,” she started. Wynonna hadn’t noticed him, whoever he was, “… we didn’t want him seeing you. There’s a couple of people who aren’t… really down with all the PDS stuff, you know.”

Wynonna nodded along, stopped, asked, “I thought it was okay? They told us at the centres people were, like, chill now.”

“Yeah, yeah, they are,” Waverly’s voice was so high Wynonna could imagine it floating up into the air, “Just, um.. Purgatory’s a small town.”

“I remember.”

“Like I said, it’s fine,” Waverly said, “Nothing to worry about.”

Nicole pulled out of the parking lot, not stopping to check her speed.

///

Waverly had gotten so used to the signs she’d forgotten they’d be an issue. She only remembered when she took that last turn off the highway, onto the road that lead onto to Purgatory. The letters, once bright red, now chipped and faded. HVF, and all that that meant.

Nicole seemed to come to the exact same revelation at the exact same moment, because Waverly caught her eye when she looked back.

Nicole turned the radio up, like the sound of it would block Wynonna’s vision. They pulled closer to where Waverly knew it was, scrawled a story high on the underpass. Of course, Wynonna didn’t miss it.

The lettering was shaky, turning into splatters at the top and drips down at the bottom. Whoever had written it had been in a hell of a hurry. Waverly remembers overhearing talk about it in Shorty's. Some guy said it was an eyesore, that they should clean up the worst of the marks around the town. Called it graffiti. He didn't stay for much longer, and all the veterans in that night had ended up with free drinks. Waverly had poured glass after glass after glass and handed them over with a smile, watching the way the light twinkled off the pins and badges on their arms. The starch in their uniforms, how the collars stood straight up. Fresh ironing and crisp lines. And the guns they had.

"What's that?" Wynonna asked like it didn't matter. Waverly adjusted her hands on the steering wheel. It had taken her a while just to stop shaking enough to drive back from the facility, and she was starting to feel like Nicole might have to take over again. She said nothing.

They made it through the overpass in less than a second, but every second without an answer made it worse.

"Waverly?" Wynonna asked again, "Did you see that graffiti back there, the HVF? What's that stand for?"

Waverly realised that wasn't even the worst of it. They were still outside city limits, and all Waverly could think about was that fucking sign.

They reached it much too quickly. Waverly caught herself speeding more than once, and Nicole had to lay a hand on her knee. When they got closer, she couldn't help herself but slow down. Something like watching a car crash.

The sign - 'Welcome to Purgatory' - and white crosses over the eyes of the family on it. At the top, three nooses. They're old. Waverly remembered the day they went up. They weren't always empty.

Wynonna said nothing. Waverly turned the radio up.

///

Wynonna hadn’t actually thought about where exactly they were going, but realised when Waverly turned the last corner that she wasn't expecting this.

"Where are we...?" Wynonna asked, but she already knew the answer. The only house down that road was her own. Their own. The homestead.

Wynonna tried to rise higher in her seat, trying to see more of the house as they started up the long driveway. So much had changed. So much, and yet the barn still stood. The bridge over the dry riverbed creaked with the weight of the car.

With how much has changed, how Waverly had changed, this felt like approaching a relic. She could picture Waverly, with Nicole, living inside some kind of condo. Prebuilt, one of a hundred just like it, with way too much glass to be even close to practical. Not here.

The car rolled to a stop and Waverly turned it off. Nicole handed her the bag from its spot under the passenger seat, and Waverly took it out of the car with her. Nicole jumped out first, and Wynonna was half expecting her to jump over the hood to open Waverly’s door too. She radiated a forceful aura of gallantry that Wynonna couldn’t bring herself to appreciate.

Waverly and Nicole were halfway to the door before they realised Wynonna wasn't following. in synchronicity, they both stopped at the same time and turned on their heels to feel her. It was almost off putting, how in sync they were. _She_ was supposed to be Waverly's sister.

Wynonna opened her door and stepped out slowly, one foot at a time, testing the ground like it was hollow underneath. Wynonna fished her bag out and slung it over her shoulder, and followed them. Waverly fiddled with something when they got to the porch, and got the keys out a second later.

It was pleasantly warm inside, like someone had left the heating running. The house had been constructed well before modern concepts of insulation, so Wynonna had grown up used to the cold. It might've looked from a cosy house on the prairie from the outside, but Wynonna had experience.

Aside from the surprising temperature, the only that was different was.... everything. The deeper Wynonna stepped into the house, the more she wondered if she'd been wrong about everything, if her brain was far more rotten than the scans had shown. Her sense of direction, at least. Maybe they had turned off another way, to another house, because this... this wasn't it.

There was so much white. She could see through to the living room, where there was a matching couch and chair set. Under that was a rug so big Wynonna thought it must've been an optical illusion, it seemed bigger than the space it was in. The fireplace was on a different room, and seemed almost decorative now: no ash, no smell of fire, no blackening on the back. No pokes next to it. The wood inside looked like it had been artisanally stacked.

From the living room, the colour scheme carried on like a gradient. Across the slate grey table in the entry way, through to the all-black kitchen. Wynonna couldn't tell if the counters were granite or marble but she was sure they were far too expensive to be justifiable. Beyond that, windows that didn't make sense to her with her memory of the space. Had they built on an extension? Had she not noticed from the outside?

Wynonna hasn't noticed her bag was slipping from her shoulder until it hit the ground with an overly dramatic thud. Before she could make an apology, Nicole had already picked it up.

Wynonna turned to face them. Their silence from behind her had revealed nothing. Wynonna's eye brows were high on her face, questioning. She felt light on her feet, ready to run. This felt suspiciously like trespassing, and Wynonna would know.

Waverly's didn't give off an 'oh shit, wrong house' vibe. In fact, it was distinctly the opposite. Nicole and Waverly seemed perfectly at home in the architectural digest copy-paste of it all.

Waverly set her keys down in a bowl shaped like a silver leaf by the door, and Wynonna kept turning from room the room. The ceiling seemed higher, but that might’ve just been the overwhelming amount of light. Wynonna didn't know the homestead could look like this, but then again, she wasn't sure it even counted as the same place. If you replace every part of a ship over years, is it still the same ship when you're done?

"Did you... knock a wall out?" Wynonna walked forward into a spot that she was sure had been occupied by brick and mortar the last time she was here. Every second she realised something new. It wasn't that she couldn't put her finger on what was different, it was that she didn't have enough hands.

Waverly nodded. "We did some renovation when we moved in."

"Yeah, no shit," Wynonna laid her hand flat on the entry way wall. The paint was clean, the exact same tone from the ceiling to the floor, almost matte. Fresh. When she took away, she half expected it to come away still wet.

The whole place was annoyingly in order. It looked like it hadn't been lived in - even the fruit in the basket on the kitchen counter didn't look entirely real. Something about the lighting, maybe.

Nicole bent down and undid the lace on her left boot, then her right. Waverly slipped her own shoes off in short order.

"Oh, oh..." Wynonna caught on quickly, and took off her own boots by stepping on the heel and trying to pull her feet out, not bothering with the laces. She left them on a rack by the door. Her feet weren't even cold.

"So, uh, most things are in the same place," Waverly pointed out the kitchen, the living room, the den behind that that had become more of a study area, "We wanted to have the kitchen on the northside but, you know, costs too much to rewire and move the plumbing."

"Yeah, I'll bet..." looking at the work they'd had done, Wynonna was willing to bet it hadn't worked out cheap either way. If Waverly was still working at Shorty's, Wynonna didn't see the math for that adding up. She took a closer look at Nicole boots, her fingers, her watch. Nothing about her seemed to scream hedge fund manager, so how had they managed this?

"You guys did... like, a lot. I'd say you stripped it down to the rafters, but it looks like... is the roof actually higher?"

Waverly took her outer jacket off and put it on the coat rack by the door. Apparently they were the kind of people who actually had and used a coat rack, Wynonna noted. Okay then.

"It took a fair while. And the firm kept coming up with all these bullshit reasons it wasn't ready. Took us forever to actually move in."

Wynonna rubbed at the corner of her arm. Waverly turned to the left, seeming intent on leading them all into the living room, but something stopped Wynonna from crossing the threshold. Everything was so... clean. Wynonna looked at her own open palm three times, but still held it close to her own body when she walked like any touch would leave a mark.

"We have cable," Waverly pointed to the sixty-inch tv mounted on the wall. Wynonna hadn't even noticed it on first glance, there was so much else to look at, "and Netflix. So, you know, feel free to..." Waverly trailed off and turned around before she actually finished her sentence. Nicole was quickly behind her, almost hovering. Waverly didn't seem to mind.

"I'll show you the guest room. That was one problem with this house, didn't have enough bedrooms."

Wynonna knew. She'd had to share a room with Willa for years, and then a bed when Waverly had come along. It wasn't a house meant for a family like theirs. Maybe not meant for any family. When their mother had left, the only silver lining had been that Wynonna got enough storage space to put her shoes away.

Waverly took Wynonna's bag from Nicole, and gave her a kiss on the cheek. Wynonna kept a wide berth from them as they talked. What about, she wasn't sure, but it sounded shockingly domestic. Nicole gave Wynonna a short nod as she walked past her, headed in the direction of the office.

Wynonna's bag, light though it was, still seemed too large on Waverly’s frame.

"Here, let me," Wynonna reached out to take it from herm "You don't have to carry my shit for me. I still have all my parts."

"It's fine," Waverly said faster than she'd intended and tacked a smile onto the end, trying to soften it, "It's just upstairs."

Waverly was up the stairs first and Wynonna waited to give her a three-step head start before she followed.

She knew what else was upstairs. Unless they'd ripped that up, too. She couldn't blame them.

Waverly waited for her on the landing and pointed to a closed door at the end of the hall.

"That's your room," Waverly walked ahead of her again. the corridor was only wide enough for one person to walk comfortably. She rested her hand on the knob and turned it, a certain sense of drama in the way her wrist curled.

"It's a little... generic, you know. We didn't decorate much. But you should feel free to."

The room was like the rest of the house - tidy, designed, pre-planned instead of an amalgamation of stuff. Foreign. Wynonna dropped her back down on the bed and counted the power outlets.

"It's... really nice," Wynonna said. It was, really, the nicest place she'd slept in..... Wynonna thought back, and found nothing better. Not at the facility, or the foster home she'd been in before, or even in the bedroom this used to be before Waverly and her wife got their hands on it.

Waverly's _wife_. Wynonna shook her head, half way between amused and confused. That'd take some getting used to.

"Thank... thank you," Wynonna said.

"Of course, don't mention it," Waverly hovered in the door way and Wynonna couldn't help but look over her shoulder at the rooms on the other side of the landing. She could see the door - except now it was a new door - ajar. Through there, white blurs that she thought could have still been tiles. She wanted to know if they'd changed it. _How much_ they had.

Waverly noticed her looking and turned to follow her eyes. Wynonna could see the slump in her shoulders when she realised, and her movement to turn back was much slower than Wynonna had seen her yet. It looked like gravity had just gotten harder on her.

"Oh, that's..." Waverly waved her hand behind her, "Me and Nicole's room, and the... upstairs bathroom."

Waverly rushed the last two words out like she couldn't stand to hold them in her mouth. Wynonna nodded, mouthed 'cool' and forced herself to look at her own room when her feet were screaming at her to walk, to look, to know.

Waverly drummed her fingers against the door frame. With a sigh, she tapped her hand against it one last time and stepped out of the way. Wynonna thought she was about to go downstairs, but she passed the landing and kept on, stopping in front of the bathroom. She turned to face Wynonna. She was waiting.

Wynonna zipped her back up quickly from where she'd been pretending to ruffle through it. She forced herself not to walk too fast. Waverly waited until she was close enough before she pushed on the door, and it swung open easily. It didn't make a sound, the hinges must've been new too.

“Here,” Waverly said. She left it there, nothing to say about the architecture or the style or the rustic decoration, no anecdotes about the workers fucking around, no story behind the copper fixtures. Wynonna put one foot on the tile. It was freezing.

“How long did it take to find me?”

Waverly flinched.

Wynonna couldn’t tear her eyes away from the tub. It wasn’t the same one - they must’ve torn the whole bathroom up to the bare copper of it – but Wynonna swore she could still see the ghost of a waterline in it. The sink had moved sides to the north wall, and they’d replaced the tiling too. It might have been the first time that mirror had ever been that clean. The window was open and there was a set of candles in cascading size on the shelf. You would’ve never known, if you didn’t already know.

Waverly followed Wynonna’s eyes, but looked away as soon as she realised what Wynonna was fixated on.

“Four days,” Waverly said. She remembered the crime scene cleaners, enough bleach to burn through the floor, “Almost five.”

“ _Jesus_ ,” Wynonna rubbed at the side of her face. She wasn’t a coroner but she knew that five days of summer, even what passed for summer in Purgatory, wasn’t kind to a corpse.

"Yep," Waverly popped the p. She leaned into the door frame and crossed her arms over herself as Wynonna stepped through.

This room, like every other room, felt bigger than it had. It might have been the window, or some clever interior design trick, or just that she'd literally and figuratively felt like the walls were closing in on her the last time she'd been in here.

The only room she hadn't seen was the room Waverly shared with Nicole, and Wynonna wasn't sure she wanted to. She wasn't sure what she afraid of seeing, or not seeing. So far, the whole thing had looked more or less like a fucking display home. Even the liquid soap dispenser next to the sink, Wynonna realised, looked like it had just been refilled. The toilet paper was a brand-new roll too, still stuck to itself. She wondered if they had a cleaner or something, or if Waverly had had to do this herself.

Cleaning for a _guest_ , Wynonna realised. Her.

"How long have you lived here?" Wynonna asked.

Waverly looked up and two the side, and Wynonna watched her lips mouth out the months as she counted back.

"It was four years, two months ago."

Wynonna raised her eyebrows. The whole house still had that new car smell. Four years was a long ass time to stay so precious about something you still remembered to take your shoes off every time you came inside.

"But that was just me. And you know, I couldn't exactly have a house warming party. With... everything. Nicole and me, together, was about two years ago. Just before we got married."

Wynonna nodded along, picturing the timeline. She never had been good at history. Or math, for that matter. Just didn't have a head for dates.

"And we only renovated after that. We moved back in six months ago."

"So you've been married two years?"

"Just about."

Wynonna nodded, sucking her bottom lip under her teeth.

“Cool, cool.”

Wynonna ran her hand over the counter top. It was marble, too, like the kitchen downstairs. Her hand ached to touch the porcelain of the tub, but something told her that that would upset Waverly. That didn’t mean she could hold herself back from looking, though.

“Does Nicole…. Know?”

Wynonna didn’t need to clarify.

“Nicole’s a cop,” Waverly said, “she’s about to become the sheriff, actually.”

Wynonna straightened up and viewed Waverly strangely. That wasn’t an answer. Not to her question, at least.

“Oh, that’s cool, Waverly, but I was…”

“She found you,” Waverly said.

“She…?” Wynonna stood up straight like she’d been hit with a switch.

“Nicole was the one….” Waverly kept her arms tightly crossed over herself, a final line of defence. “The one who found your body.”

Wynonna felt a spike of cold run up through her feet, pinning her to that spot. "Nicole?" Wynonna drew it out. She rubbed at the side of her face, then moved her hand to cover most of it in a half assed face palm. "Nicole, your wife, found...."

Waverly nodded in confirmation.

"That was before we..." Waverly made a vague gesture that someone was still much more information than Wynonna wanted, “...ya know."

Wynonna gripped the side of the sink. She was very aware of her own melodrama; she drew her eyes up and looked herself in the mirror, saw Waverly watching behind her. She ran over it again in her head, the same words. Nicole. Wife. She found her body. She was the one who...

"Well shit," Wynonna's voice broke into a laugh halfway through that even she wasn't expecting, "Nicole found me. Okay. Yeah, sure. _Why not."_

Wynonna was talking more to herself than Waverly at the end of it. Waverly, for her own part, seemed happy to carry on her own solo conversation.

"That was how we got together, actually. Over your case. And then, after. You know, high stakes."

"Oh, yeah, sure..." It was almost too much. Almost hilarious. Wynonna couldn't keep her expression serious if she tried - and she did. When she spoke again, her voice was high with amusement and dangerously choppy, almost to the point of laughter. "Yeah, I think we've all been there, navigating a new romance against the backdrop of a global-"

"This isn't _funny_."

Waverly's arms didn't seem defensive, anymore. None of her did. She was sharper around the edges. Wynonna closed her mouth out of reflex more than anything, even her usual quick retorts failing her completely.

"This isn't a joke, Wynonna. It's not funny. You weren't here, but _we were_ , but I'm sure you didn't consider that when-"

" _Babe_!" Nicole's sweet voice reached them through the floorboards. She always seemed to speak at a frequency that make shockingly effective use of the airflow, or whatever, because Waverly could hear her crystal clear no matter how many walls were between them.

"Yeah?" Waverly called back, speaking directly through Wynonna.

"You done with the tour?"

Waverly gave Wynonna a look she couldn't understand.

"Yeah, we're done."

Waverly turned and was already head in the direction of Nicole's voice when Wynonna sprang into action. She caught Waverly by her sleeve just as she was leaving the bathroom. Waverly could've slipped it without a problem but, for her part, stayed.

"Yeah?" her voice was much more moderated. Sound could carry in that house, and she had a reason Wynonna might appreciate not everything she said being overheard.

Waverly's expression made Wynonna already feel dumb about what she was planning on asking, but she'd wanted clarification for hours, and she didn't know what else she could say not that she'd already got her attention. She wasn’t quick enough to come up with a replacement question that wouldn't sound even dumber.

"So, uh, Waverly..." Wynonna stepped in closer to her, closing the distance. Wynonna looked in the same direction Nicole had just spoken from. she heard something clang in the kitchen, metal on metal on metal.

"I'm sorry, I just wanted to..."

Waverly stepped back as Wynonna took another one forward, and Wynonna wanted to hit herself for what she'd said. What she was about to say, how she was gonna say it.

"So, like, you're gay?"

The second it was out, it sounded even worse than she'd thought it was. Wynonna had to settle for biting on her own teeth, despite the part that was immediately yelling at her to bite her own tongue off. Or just punch herself in the face.

Waverly smiled. Her arms, for the first time since they entered the bathroom, dropped. Wynonna supposed it was better to be laughed at than yelled at.

"Yes, Wynonna. How'd you figure that out? My wife?"

Wynonna huffed out through her nose.

"Yeah, right, just... that's cool, you know. Like it's all good, and everything." Wynonna finished with a cheesy smile.

"Thanks, Wynonna," Waverly said, "I mean, you missed my gay crisis by about five years, but thanks."

Wynonna rocked herself forward on her heels until she almost lost her balance. When she thought she couldn't see, Waverly rolled her eyes. Whatever, Waverly decided. There was a joke in there about respecting the dead.

///

“No, see, you twist here-“

“No, it’s the other way, read here…” Waverly shoved the pamphlet in Nicole’s face, her voice getting slightly more annoyed each time Nicole disagreed with her.

Wynonna kept her distance, sitting on the couch opposite them and waiting for them to sort it out between themselves.

"Come on, it can't be that hard..."

Nicole picked the box up from the coffee table and picked up the blue vial from inside it again. She turned it around in her hand, and it sloshed around in response to the changed force.

"You sure there isn't a video online, or something? We could call the centre, I guess..."

"Aha!" Waverly exclaimed, turning to Nicole and holding the gun-like injection device up in victory, "Got it. The vial slot in here, and then you pull this up, and pull this trigger when it's in place."

Nicole leaned over to follow Waverly's movements and inspect her work. She mouthed something to herself for a few seconds, and eventually nodded in agreement. She handed the vial over to Waverly, who slotted it in the way she'd just described. There was a satisfying click to indicate they were on the right path.

"Great," Waverly said, and turned to Wynonna. She patted the empty spot on the couch between her and Nicole.

Wynonna chewed the inside of her mouth. She didn't like the look of the device in the hands of a professional, and watching Waverly and Nicole argue over how it worked hadn't exactly filled her with the utmost confidence.

She forced an unsteady smile as she rose. It's not like getting a needle in the back of the neck was ever going to be a fun family bonding activity, so she might as well just get it over with.

Wynonna sat down just as Waverly got up and walked around to the back of the couch. Wynonna kept her head straight while Waverly touched the back of her neck, and Wynonna knew from past experience to lean her head down.

"There we go..." Waverly said.

Wynonna felt the cold metal against her neck.

"Ready? Three, two..."

///

_“There’s nothing here, don’t worry. Matty and Simon cleaned it out a week ago, right? And the barricade was still in place,” the voice crackles over the radio and does little to reassure Samantha. The lights are all out, of course they are, and the shelves have mostly been knocked over. She’s sure there isn’t even anything to find in here anymore, with all the scavengers that’d been through._

_“Right,” she says, “You better be right, cause I’m shit out of ammo.”_

_Samantha adjusts the strap of her purely decorate rifle. It still makes her feel better just to hold it. It’s heavy, if nothing else. Could still be used for a bit of blunt trauma._

_“You’ll be fine. You in the right part of the store? Batteries should be close to the checkouts.”_

_“Yeah, yeah,” Samantha says. She picks her way slowly over the discarded trolleys and baskets. Every step she takes reverberates through the building. It’s downright spooky, but it makes her feel a bit surer than the place is actually empty._

_“Just come back quick, you don’t wanna be out after dark.”_

_“Don’t worry,” Samantha says. She makes her way over to the checkouts and finds the batteries right where they should be, shocked no one had looted them yet. She slips them into her bag and checks her watch. She has a minute._

_Samantha jumps behind the till and presses the buttons out of curiosity. She does something right and it opens. Must not be electric, then. The money’s still there, too. Samantha hovers her hand over it._

_Money doesn’t have the same value it used to, but she knows as much as everyone else that this can’t go on forever. They’ll have to go back to the real world someday. She scoops up a handful and stuffs it into her bag, then goes back for more. More and more and more until the tills almost empty, and all that’s left are the coins. She goes for those too, and they rattle around against each other, metallic and harsh. Any sounds are louder when it’s quiet around._

_Except it isn’t quiet._

_Not completely._

_Samantha doesn’t hear it before there’s an arm around her stomach pulling her down to the ground. She screams but her radio is off and screaming won’t do anything to it but make it angrier._

_It goes for her organs, the soft flesh of her belly. She tries to cover herself but it rips her open. Her insides rush out to meet the air like they’re curious to see. It’s like squeezing out toothpaste; once it’s out, there’s no putting that mess back in the tube. Doesn’t make sense how it fit in the first place. She stops moving when it’s hand wraps around her liver._

_It guts her. She splits like fruit and all the seeds and juice spill out. It’s so hungry it’ll devour her, stalk and rind and all._

///

Wynonna barely managed to keep from falling onto the floor, thanks in large part to Nicole's arm across her chest, trying to restrict her movements.

"No! She's having a seizure, you shouldn't restrain her," Waverly said, practically jumping back over the couch to be at Wynonna's side, "they say you're supposed to let it happen, that-"

Wynonna groaned in a way that even scared herself. Waverly stepped back. The pressure of Nicole's arm across her chest eased, then was removed entirely. The first thing Wynonna was aware of was the incredible pain in her head. It was deep behind her eyes, like a migraine but just off centre, and hot. Sharp and intense and seeming to get worse with every second. Wynonna gripped the sides of her head, but it did nothing to ease the ache. Her next groan was more pitiful, full of pain and sounding like her voice was about to shatter.

"Jesus _Christ_ ," she said. Waverly slid into the narrow space beside Wynonna and looped her arm around her waist.

"Are you okay?" Waverly said.

Wynonna shook her head. What a stupid question. It took half a minute of gripping at her face and biting her teeth before Wynonna felt able to open her eyes. Her vision was far too bright, like she'd just stepped outside after spending days in the dark. It made the pain behind the eyes worse. She fell into Waverly's side.

“Is that… supposed to happen?” Nicole whisper-mouthed over Wynonna’s head. Waverly shrugged, and the movement rocked through Wynonna’s limp form.

"Let's take her up to bed," Waverly said. Nicole nodded, and accepted her half of Wynonna’s weight.

Her half ended up being more like two thirds, since her height and her build give her the advantage. they lead Waverly to the stairs and at the bottom, Wynonna starts to get her own footing back. That's a good thing, because Waverly had been trying to figure out how all three of them could fit on the stairs together and hadn't been able to see how it'd work.

Wynonna mumbled something, and Waverly smoothed her hair down.

"It's alright, Wy... it's okay," Waverly drew her hand back as Nicole took over. She took each step with Wynonna, who was following her lead like she was in some kind of trance.

Near the top, Wynonna speed up. She took two steps ahead of Nicole and made it to the top on springily steady feet. Nicole hung back, arms out stretches, reflexes ready to catch her if it was necessary.

"M' fine," Wynonna made a motion to wave of all the attention, but her arm gave up halfway and came down to slap hard against her thigh, "I'm good."

Nicole, unconvinced, tried to grab her again. Wynonna, suddenly lucid, sprung back. Something turned on behind her eyes, and when she spoke again her voice was full bodied and determined.

"I'm okay," she said, "Thank you."

Waverly watched from the bottom of the stairs, leaning against the bannister with her cheek. She could only see Wynonna's feet as she turned and walked away, and Nicole came down a second later.

Waverly raised an eyebrow. Nicole shrugged.

"She looked fine," Nicole said.

"Jesus, though," Waverly said, "That medicine, the Nuero...Nuerotropic..."

"Nueurotryptalin," Nicole said. She'd read the name on the box to herself, enunciated it in her mind, "It's got a hell of a kick, right?"

Waverly nodded. She looked at the vacant spot at the top of the stairs, where Wynonna had just been, before Nicole walked past her and planted a kiss on her cheek.      

Wynonna stumbled in the bathroom, falling forward bodily and just catching herself before her head hit the mirror. Her hair was airy, unsteady, buzzing in a way that made her feel adjacent to nauseous. It was worse this time than the last. She wondered if that was the way these things went.

Wynonna was suddenly aware of all the sensations on her face. The makeup was feeling too thick, almost itchy. Every time she blinked she was aware of the contacts, like the thickness was exaggerated to catch her eyelids every time. She turned the tap on and splashed much-too-cold water onto her face, and that only made the make-up feel stickier.

Wynonna held her eyelids open with one hand, ready to remove the contacts. She made quick work of it. Taking them out was easier than putting them in.

Wynonna felt half bad for rifling through Waverly’s things trying to find a makeup removal bad, but she didn’t want to ask Waverly about it.

She found one, eventually, and wet it under the tap. She took the pad between her two fingers. when she squeezed it, a drop of excess water came out. She started at the side of her nose, and drew a thick line out to the cheek. Again, on the other side. Again and again and again. It came off easily, and stained the pad. Wynonna reached for another one without checking on her own progress. She kept her eyes down, away from the mirror, as she took more and more off.

When her skin felt light again, she knew she was done. She couldn’t help herself but look.

Her eyes were yellow. That’s all she could handle seeing before she had to look away.

Wynonna shook her head, trying to work her way through the headrush.

Wynonna reached back to touch her neck and winced when she touched the sore spot there. It felt hot, and raised, and bigger than it actually was. She could only imagine how bad it looked.

And that was the easiest part.

They'd told her that her memories would start to come back slowly, that she'd remember bits and pieces of when she was feral. She just hadn't expected it would be so... vivid.

Wynonna brushed the hair out of her face. She straightened out, and her eyes fell on the handle to the medicine cabinet. She stopped all movement and listened.

Through the floorboards, Waverly laughed at something Nicole said. She could hear the conversation continue. They were busy.

Wynonna opened the cabinet and immediately found the Nueurotryptalin. The seal on the box had already been broken from the shot they'd just done, and it opened a lot easier now. Easier than she expected, and it came open with a level of force, sending the vials tumbling down into the sink.

Wynonna picked them up one by one, letting them roll together and clink in the palm of her hand. She counted them out to make sure she wasn't missing any and, satisfied, set all but one down.

Wynonna held it between too finger tips and tilted her head up as she raised it to the light. It was see-through, thin... unremarkable. It looked exactly like....

Wynonna eyed the tap.

She turned it on and ripped the cap off the vial. She tipped it over, and emptied it, and filled it with the water. Wynonna screwed the cap back in place and eyed it, once again, in the light. She couldn't spot the difference.

In a flurry, Wynonna repeated the process with each one of the vials and dried the outside of each off on her shirt.

Wynonna dropped them back in the box and placed the box back in the cabinet.She looked at the tub one last time before she left, and turned the light off after her. Waverly must’ve heard her, because she called up a second later, “Goodnight, Wynonna.”

Wynonna replied, but too quietly for her to hear. A second later, she heard Nicole and Waverly laughing. Wynonna shut her door behind her, and the sound stopped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thx for reading babes, if you like my writing and want to you can [check out my ko-fi](https://ko-fi.com/A2463VTC)

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr: [@ripdolls](http://ripdolls.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Before you ask: Yes, I've had this up before. I took this story down to do some significant structural edits. I’m taking a screenwriting course at uni currently and learnt a bunch of stuff about narrative structure that I thought could really apply to this story. Basically, cutting out the pointless parts, tightening the story, giving it a more ‘cinematic’ pace – and I’m happy with the changes I’ve made. I think it’s a much better, more planned, more impactful story overall. Please comment if you enjoyed :)


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